PROPOSAL TO HANDLE CHILD ABDUCTORS

Bill StokesCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Several days after 7-year-old Melissa Ackerman was abducted here, I happened to visit a 1st-grade class in a suburban school. I sat on a chair and talked with the 25 or so bright-eyed kids as they sat cross-legged on the floor in front of me. We talked a little about reading and writing, and about their plans for the summer.

The tender innocence, the precious enthusiasm and trust and the vulnerability of the children were like something that hit you over the head and brought tears to your eyes.

One of the 1st graders was a member of my family. If someone were to harm him, given the means, I would kill that person in a second.

I would do that instinctively, and I might justify it later as an individual act because society would not do the killing for me.

There is no way to violate us more than to harm our children. It strikes at the very core of our being, and it triggers thoughts and actions that we would never be capable of otherwise. It is the same basic character trait that has a small and frail bird fling itself at a creature a thousand times its size when its young are threatened. Any human parent would do likewise without even thinking about it.

When the search for Melissa was at its most intense, I stopped briefly here in Somonauk.

Missy, as she is known to her family and friends, was dragged from her bicycle and driven off by a man at midday June 2 on the edge of this small community 40 miles west of Chicago.

The abduction had put the town of shady, tree-lined streets and block-long business district into a state of shock.

''Kids are supposed to be safe anywhere in a town like this,'' De Kalb County sheriff Roger Scott said.

That`s what Sheree and Michael Ackerman thought, too, and that is why they chose to rear their daughter in the brick duplex on La Fayette Street.

On this day, the schools recently had been dismissed for the summer, but few children were on the streets.

With the community teeming with lawmen and everyone watchful and suspicious, Somonauk never had been a safer place for children.

But such logic did not transcend the terrible fear that was, and still is, in the hearts of parents here.

In the neighborhood in which Sheree and Michael Ackerman live, a girl of 9 or 10 rode a bicycle down the street. As I drove past, she raised her hand and waved.

That simple act of friendliness tells you a lot about the kind of community this is. It is an assumption that is passed on from the adults to the children that if someone drives through your neighborhood, that person must be a friend, and so you wave.

If that little girl`s parents had seen the harmless, friendly gesture, in the light of Melissa`s abduction they would have been horrified.

Such a barrier to communication is just one of the things that results from the actions of those despicable creatures who prey on our children.

Of much more importance is the immeasurable, gut-wrenching damage they do to our deepest, most strongly felt instinct: protection of the young.

Those who do horrendous things to our children must be killed. To do anything less to them asks too much of our natural composition.

There should be a law that addresses this, a statement that shouts the unwavering determination of society to kill those who attack its children.

That some of these attackers may be sick and in need of treatment and therefore deserve mercy is outweighed by the incredible damage they do to the very basic fabric of our nature.

Obviously, child abductors are sick, but if they choose not to seek treatment themselves but to exercise their awful urges, then they must be killed.

If that is oversimplification of a profoundly complex set of circumstances, so be it. First we should protect the children. Then we can try to deal with the complexities of aberrant human behavior. We have not advanced far enough up the big evolutionary ladder to do otherwise.

Shortly after their daughter was abducted, Sheree and Michael Ackerman sat on the front step of their home while a photographer stood before them. They twisted their hands together, as if they were clutching at each other for help.

Those who would advocate mercy for the child abductors should have been there that day and looked into the red-rimmed eyes of Missy`s mother and father.